It sounds to me like they’re pretending the Tom Clancy books never happened and are starting all over.
Hey, that’s fine with me. Give Ryan a taste for martinis, whoever can be as beautiful and funny as Myrna Loy, and a fuzzy dog. Everything’ll be just peachy.
[hijack] Could one of you fine Doper list the Clancy books in order for me. I’m a little lost.[/hijack]
So, the new movie based on a Tom Clancy book will have almost nothing to do with the book it’s based on? Hey, it just might be worth seeing!
Okay, going by memory:
Hunt for red October
Red Storm Rising (which isn’t technically a Jack Ryan book)
Patriot Games (which was actually a ‘prequel’ to October)
Cardinal of the Kremlin
Clear and Present Danger
Sum of all Fears
Without Remorse (which takes place during early Vietnam, which would make it, in storyline chronology, the “first” book of them all)
Debt of Honor
Executive Orders
Rainbow Six
Bear and the Dragon
Now, I’ve heard some vague rumors about Clancy and the books, so take this with a grain of salt- First, I’d heard that his first wife, whom he divorced a few years back, held some of the rights to the books, possibly going as far as owning the rights to the Jack Ryan character.
True or not, if you read Rainbow Six, which was a poor excuse for a Clancy book anyway, you’ll note that there was maybe as many as two references to “Jack”, about as many to “The President”, and absolutely none at all to “Jack Ryan” or “President Ryan”.
The other thing I’d heard is that Clancy is now basically just “going through the motions” of writing, and that Rainbow Six was almost entirely a mere vehicle to get his video games off the ground. All I know for sure is that it read about as badly as the Op-Center books, which is pretty darn bad.
October was great, Red Storm Rising was damned good, and both Sum and Remorse were worth reading… Patriot was okay, the rest were merely adequate, and while I haven’t read Dragon, I did read Rainbow and that pretty much killed my appetite for more.
Bear and the Dragon was little more than “Hey, if the US ever goes to war with China, we’ll kick their asses from here to Nanking!”
I wait breathlessly for the day that Red Storm Rising is turned into a movie without altering the events at all.
If it’s interesting at all to you, Doc N, I’ve read The Bear and the Dragon, too.
Interestingly, I read B&D before I read Rainbow Sex.
Bear &c., like the erstwhile television show, B. J. and the Bear, had a respectable level of schlock. Once you get a taste for ten thousand words a day or more, man, the schlock is sustenance. Devil may catch you.
R6
I don’t really know much about Clancy or whatever artistic integrity may be destroyed by this movie or whatever.
But the trailer was pretty cool. IMO, if one forgets about the novel connection it could be a pretty good action flick. Anyone agree?
The Super Bowl in Denver in the book takes place at a fictional indoor stadium. IIRC, it’s called the Skydome, which is actually a stadium in Toronto.
Damn, that’s screwed up. Especially since Buck Zimmer’s death is a MAJOR plot point in Executive Orders.
I guess Clancy’s books are inherently unfilmable. There’s too much going on to make a 2, even 2 1/2 hour movie out of them. An HBO miniseries, maybe?
And yeah, what Doc said about the wife. Think Clancy’s divorce has anything to do with these shiatty books and films? Maybe he just needs the money. His ex-wife apparently cleaned his ass out. When he tried to buy the Vikings a couple years back, the NFL investigated his finances and found that he had nowhere near the money he said he did.
My dad is an avid table wargamer and says he used to see Clancy at gaming conventions, but that he has pretty much disappeared from this circuit in the past couple years.
So, we’re saying I shouldn’t bother reading The Bear and the Dragon, then?
Really, I just wanted to post what I said to my friend after reading SoaF: “So, the moral of this story is ‘Never shoot your Nazi research scientist before he filters your tritium.’”
Hey, we thought it was funny…
There are lots of Arabic-looking Hollywood stalwarts who could fill those roles:
Heslov: “They call him the Sand Spider”
Charlton Heston: “Why?”
Heslov: “Probably because it sounds scary.”
Since we’re listing Arabic or Arabic-looking actors, how about the supremely tasty-looking Oded Fehr?
As to the OP, I won’t be seeing the movie. That changes the whole point! The reason the book actually managed to creep me out a bit was because the events were entirely too plausible - I first read it just as Osama was beginning to make himself a SERIOUS pain-in-the-butt, as opposed to just another kvetcher whining about Western Imperialism.
To those complaining about continuity, how come nobody worries about the fact that James Bond should be eighty years old by now?
What? You mean you take Jack Ryan seriously? Uh, okay.
Cervaise, I think it’s pretty well established that each individual Bond movie (and book I guess, I’ve never read one) is just supposed to be an action romp through a variety of settings featuring actors, vehicles, weapons, etc. that are current with the times.
Clancy books, on the other hand, very often refer to events that previously occurred. It’s not high literature, but Clancy seems to at least try and keep a continous running timeline going. There’s often events in the books that won’t make sense to you (to varying degrees) if you haven’t read the previous book. Executive Orders is probably one of the best examples of this. Not only is it a true sequel to Debt of Honor, it refers to and hinges on several events from other Jack Ryan books.
I don’t think this happens in Bond movies as anything more than an in-joke.
Affleck may do okay. I just saw him in Changing Lanes, and he seemed to have more depth than in previous roles. (Excellent movie, by the way. It could have been very formulaic, but eschewed all the underdog and action flick cliches.)
If Affleck isn’t careful, he could become another Brad Pitt. And that’s not a bad thing.
Y’all saw the SPOILER WRANING, right?
Okay, then.
While the movie takes place in modern time, Jack Ryan is young, fresh to the Agency. He’s still only dating Cathy, so yeah, they’re taking the continuity right out. The bomb goes off about 1/2 way through the movie, instead of the end, like the book. They changed the actor for John Clark, too. And yes, it’s Nazi’s and Baltimore.
Damn, make that: Y’all saw the SPOILER WARNING, right?
And yes, they did keep the Golan Heights bit, but just barely and there’s really not much about refurbishing, either.
You know, by this point it seems like any connection to Tom Clancy and his characters are just an attempt to cash in on their popularity. I know one of the oldest complaints about movies is “It was nothing like the book!”, but come on. This is more “inspired by” than “based on”.
What do your sexual tastes have to do the the bastardization of Clancy novels?
d&r
You bastard.